Government Leads Sacramento's October Job Growth

Job growth continues in the Sacramento area, even though unemployment is up slightly. The number of jobs in the four-county Sacramento region is approaching a million.

"We've gained 2,400 jobs between September and October for a total all industry employment which brought the number of jobs in the Sacramento region to 961,300 and that is an all-time high for our area," says Cara Welch is with the state Employment Development Department.

Sectors seeing month-over-month job growth in October include government, retail, healthcare and trade, transportation and utilities.

But those gains were offset by losses in construction, leisure and hospitality and manufacturing. And that helped push unemployment up slightly. October's jobless rate of 5.2 percent was up from September's 5.1 percent.

But October's 5.2 percent unemployment rate was a 10 year low.

"The last time it was that low or even near there was in October 2006 when the rate was 4.5 percent and then October in 2007 the rate was 5.6 percent," says Welch.

In October, the jobless rate in Sacramento County was 5.4 percent, 5.0 percent in El Dorado County, 4.5 percent in Placer County and 5.4 percent in Yolo County.